The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  12

  The picture magazine in the Tabac, ‘Signal’, had been published every month throughout the war. Now the pictures were of De Gaulle and the Invasion and the editorials harangued Laval and Darnand, The Head Of The Milice, and were even critical of the senile Petain. The magazine had sent a photographer to Algiers and there was De Gaulle, tall, erect, correct, superior, secure. Not a doubt in him. And here was The Government in Exile – the Next Republic. Upright, uniformed, determined, pure. The future. Alongside advertisements for perfume and a German toothpaste, “A quality German Product.”

  Duthileul took it to his window seat and basked in his success. Hot July 1944, much more blood to weep – but not him or his – he had backed the right horse and would continue to do so; go with his son to the parachute drops and let Dominique himself give the next money. Then, and only when it was completely safe, have him join the Maquis.

  Captain Phillipe was killed in a botched ambush outside Cahors. Three others with him. The men came down the hillside and made off with the bodies. Phillipe was taken to Montluc where his parents and all the men of his Lotoise Maquis buried him – daring a German attack – and swore they would commemorate his real name – Jean-Jacques Chapou – in the streets and schools and churches and playing-fields of The Lot he had died to Liberate. Then they went back to War.

  Sniping at the German patrols that left Cahors less and less frequently to hopelessly police this land they were losing.

  The RAF and the Americans bombed German-held French towns. A wind moves a stick of bombs and the barracks or the factory is missed and innocents are killed. It is hard to forgive, harder still to forget. Hardest of all to live with the irony of surviving the invader to watch family and neighbours taken by the Liberator. It asked God hard questions. And the people of Paris and Milan and Berlin and Dresden could only wait and hope that the sprinkling of His random miracles would spare them and theirs.

  Arbel and the men heard rumours of the invasion. Heard the planes that left each night to shoot down the bombers; and heard the first bombs falling on Germany. He walked to the bar on Sunday and asked Lothar which direction was West. The direction the German planes went, the direction the American and British planes came from, of course.

  German paranoia accelerated. Police arrived at the mine at night, woke everyone and searched everywhere. For guns, information, anything. They found nothing but letters and an accordion. Next day, a siren, an air-raid, another hour without work.

  De Gaulle fretted lest he not be first into Paris when it was liberated. Then, brilliant, gave the honour to General Leclercq. The following day he would walk the Champs Elysee to Glory.

  Jacques saved some of the tomatoes and raspberries and trimmed back the exploding courgettes and weeded for two days. Aching, bent all day, hot, sweaty, occupied. He ate some carrots, some of the gooseberries, drank from the well, took half the courgettes and left them on Ardelle’s doorstep, came home and, like every evening, dreaded the night.

  The Maquis of the Lot united to launch the full-scale attack on Cahors. Rid it of first the Germans and then, as they had been promised, of the attentistes, the collaborators, bureaucrats, all the servants of the vile and shameful Vichy Regime. All those who hadn’t refused.

  Sniping, scurrying, terrified, it was hand-to-hand now. Every house to be searched; no way of knowing who was in control of what – no way of thinking further than keep the weapon loaded, ready, identify by silhouette – fire. Re-load. Wait. Ignore what you felt. Ignore. Check all around. Again. Make a yard toward the door – look around – step over the moaning youth in the doorway – see the flash, hear the pop in your chest as your lung punctured, fall fall fall no air so quickly black to white and pass over. And that killer killed as he reached the doorway he’d just won. Terrified screaming families barricaded in with Germans, with Maquisards. Smoke and shot and splinters of masonry and glass and bone and blood and brain and the stench and the dogs and the death. Three days and nights.

  Jerome, Bernadie, Serge and Michel trapped six Germans in a church and drove them up into the bell-tower, then above the clock, firing through the pigeon-shit covered volets. Serge died and Michel, too. The two surviving Germans surrendered. When they saw there was only Jerome and Bernadie they considered reaching for their weapons; but like their Occupation, that moment had passed. Exhausted men, tired to death, tired of death, their hands on their heads, were rounded into the emptied schools, fed, and locked in.

  The Capital of the Lot was free. Their Department, their beautiful Lot, free.

  To rejoice.

  He ploughed manure into what was Duthileul’s land. He performed the routine – washed the barrow, raked down food, fed the chickens, came back to the house. But no sitting there. Ghosts would swallow him. Work. Change the bed sweep the floor clean the windows clear the cobwebs.

  Breakfast. Coffee? Egg? Need hot water. Light a fire? In July? Ham? Got none. Is it July? Cheese? All gone. Make some – churn – that’s hard. What day is it? Don’t know. Do the washing.

  He found a baby bonnet. His heart stalled, teetering immediately on the precipice of despair. He moved, and stalled again when he opened a drawer and saw clothes she’d never wear again. Wash them? He laughed for the second time. Maniac! Someone might be there. At the Lavoir. Someone to have to not talk to. Ever again. Do the washing at night, fool. Wash the floor? The table? I need hot water. Light a fire. In June? Is it June? It’s August, surely. I don’t know. I should know. I’m a farmer, I know the sky. Herrisson said I knew things.

  I don’t want to know anything now – that’s the difference.

  Jerome, so proudly quoting Lenin, bellowed above the bedlam in the bar, “And now we must proceed to construct the New Republic!”

  “Fuck that, Josephine! Tonight we drink and fuck!”

  “I put it to you Comrades – Sex – or Politics?”

  The bar bellowed back, “Sex!”

  “I stand down,” he said to applause. “And I shall take a leak!” Cheering.

  He went upstairs, took his piss and opened the toilet window onto the square and watched the party.

  He could taste a meanness in the bitter way he scoured the dancing singing feasting mob and couldn’t not think, “Where were you when there were ten of us?”

  A weariness swept through him and he slumped on the cold floor next to the shit-hole and wanted to be with Sara.

  He had survived it.

  He had survived it.

  He had killed. He had liberated. He had risked and he had doubted and he Lived.

  Someone knocked at the door. “Come in Comrade,” he called.

  “Come in?”

  “Sure.”

  The door opened – a man Jerome didn’t know stood there. “Pissed?”

  “Probably.”

  “Toughen, my friend – this is our Party!”

  “I did toughen,” said Jerome.

  “Good. Thank you. Now – could I have my first crap in Free France in peace?”

  “Sure.”

  He was pulled to his feet, shook the man’s hand and went down to the raucous bar. He would have preferred to leave his bitter blood-lust in the toilet with the other shit – but he didn’t. The survivors, Jean-Luc, Bernadie and the Basque, Roger De Mendes, roared when they saw him.

  “Jerome – come here and tell us what we should be thinking.”

  “I want to be with Sara.”

  “St. Cirgues? Not tonight. Drink – and stop thinking, you fool. You – barman – give this soldier, this comrade, this windbag with balls a drink!”

  “Dance, Jerome,” said Roger, “dance to oblivion – tomorrow we’ll make a Republic – we promise.”

  Roger danced. No music, just a clapping, stamping ecstatic bar as Jerome and all of them caught the Spanish rhythm. And drank. And laughed. For Joy and Survival and his bloody Mother and Sara and Zoe but most of all for what he’d been and what he’d stayed. Zealous.

  And he had to laugh at the arbitr
ary roll of dice that had spared him, taken his betters and left him here to try and understand Fate. Could almost make you believe in God! And what did God, that indolent voyeur, think of him, Jerome Lacaze?

  “What an ant!” he roared into a sudden silence and the bar turned to him, swaying, laughing.

  “What a fucking ant!”

  “To the fucking ants!” toasted Bernadie and the bar toasted the fucking ants of this world and the inane sound filled, for that moment, that bar in that square of that town in that Department of that Country for the End of That War.

  Ardelle and Jacques sat.

  He came one night a week and sometimes she sewed and sometimes they talked, but mostly they shared the silence. Neither had anything new to express, it felt enough to connect their lifelessness.

  “The German soldiers...” she began and stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Raped me.”

  Silence.

  “Simone, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence.

  “You’re not pregnant?”

  “No. It’s the only thing I’ve thanked God for in months.” Jacques tried to think of something to say.

  “I’m – sorry, Ardelle.”

  “We manage without words, Jacques.”

  “Have you washing you need doing?”

  She looked at him. It was night.

  “Some...” she said.

  “I need work you see...”

  When he left he walked the dog and his barrow to the Lavoir where he midnight-washed their clothes.

  Two nights later when he brought them back, dried, Ardelle had been to the village – and she had The News.

  “The Lot is free, Jacques.”

  He absorbed that, nodding.

  “Is Jerome alive?”

  “No-one knows. Yet.”

  Now possibilities swarmed around the quiet room. And Ardelle’s heart quailed.

  “He’ll be bombed, then...”

  “No. No, Ardelle.”

  He stood.

  “But... It’s safe...” Ardelle’s tears dripped on the washing.

  He held his till he was outside her door. She could come back!

  He stood on Ardelle’s doorstep.

  Spain. It’s not far. I could go and get her! He walked towards their home.

  I could sell something – sell Duthileul the house – anything – go and get her.

  Where? Where is she? Where are they? The Curé in Souceyrac!

  He’ll know! He knows where she is! I must see him.

  He marched past his house, down the lane, through the village and out into the empty black night.

  He will know, he will know, he must know, he knows...

  Senaillac, the Pas d’Aubinies, the endless woods and hills of newly Free France.

  As his church clock struck the quarter to four o’clock the Curé was woken.

  He opened the door on a bearded, excited, face. “Where is she?”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “Jacques Vermande. You sent my – wife and son – Simone and our baby – some time ago. I paid. You remember me! I asked could I go. You said ‘no’. And you left us in your room. Where did she go?”

  The Curé struggled to grasp this situation. “South...”

  “Spain?”

  “Yes...”

  “Where?”

  “Where in Spain?”

  “Yes!”

  The Curé took a tiny breath. “I have no idea. No idea at all. Come in. Sit down. Do you need a drink? I’ve wine...”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Of course not.”

  Jacques’ ashen face demanded more.

  “I never knew. If I were to have been tortured... I could never know.”

  Jacques’ mind froze. “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  An empty quietness began.

  “But the war is over – she could come back now.”

  The Curé sat. “Perhaps she will...”

  Jacques swung to face him. “Do you think so?”

  The Curé thought again. He had a war’s worth of grief experience. “I have no idea.”

  “But she might?”

  “The War is not over, my friend.”

  “But I could go and find her... There is no war in Spain...”

  “No-one knows where she is. No-one.”

  Jacques thought. “She does.”

  “Ye-es. And God, too.”

  “Well He won’t tell me.”

  “No.”

  Another quietness.

  The Curé sat forward. “Do you talk to Him?”

  “Yes...”

  “And does He respond?”

  Jacques thought.

  “He gave me...”

  His words stopped.

  “And now He has taken her away?”

  “Them – yes.”

  The Curé offered the chair again. “When did you last sleep?”

  Jacques thought.

  “Before I met you. With them.”

  A small clock struck the hour.

  “Will you sleep here?”

  Jacques looked at the man.

  The Curé looked at him, simple heart-rent peasant. “She’ll tell you when she can, won’t she? A card, a letter?” Jacques Vermande had not considered such a thing.

  The Curé poured a wine, fixed it in Jacques’ hand, drank one himself and said, “My wife and child don’t exist. My wives and children and their husbands have been killed and maimed, deported and tortured. This War, my friend, this is Hell. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Keep the Faith.”

  “In?”

  “You.”

  “And her?”

  “Of course.”

  Jacques walked westward Home. A dawn rose behind him. His eyes saw only the dying night.

  She could write! She could tell him where to come to. To meet them. To get them. To bring them back! Home. She’ll hear the news, and she’ll write!

  He would sell something. Else. What had he?

  In Ludwigsdorf the food situation became desperate. Eggs were stolen. Vegetables were stolen. Anything was stolen. A bike was stolen. A trailer for a car was stolen. Anything of value that could be traded for food. Then one of the Italians, a butcher, stole and killed a baby pig, cut it up, salted it and hung it from a ladder. The whole dormitory had a thin feast.

  And a new Polish prisoner could play the fucking accordion!

  The Director of the mine was replaced by a man with one arm. He’d lost the other in Africa. The Director was sent to the front. Still they had to work. The news outside the pale green hell was good, life inside was pale green and hell.

  Late August and De Gaulle walked the ecstatic Champs De Lycee. All France celebrated.

  Jerome wrote to Sara, a letter bursting with pride. He had been voted – voted! – onto the panel of men and women of The Resistance who would judge the collaborators. He would sit in the high leather chairs in the Palais De Justice in Cahors! When this work was done he would be home. Till then, he sent his whole Love, but he would keep his heart here, if she didn’t mind. He might need it.

  The drive for Vengeance and the promised purge was strong. Consuming. Three hundred civil servants, gendarmes, teachers, shop owners, labourers, men and women had been rounded up in an orgy of denunciations. There was a fever in the air.

  When the first thirty cases were heard there were crowds teeming inside and outside the Court. The panel were cheered as they arrived, the prisoners spat on. The panel found all but one guilty and they were marched straight to the Place Gambetta and a firing squad rid France of their stain. The Committee ordered they be buried in un-marked graves.

  Someone must have cleared away the carcasses. Wives, mothers, husbands, fathers. Buried them. In France.

  Sara came with the child, who wouldn’t enter Jacques’ house again. So they stood on his steps and Zoe knocked on the door. It was flung open by a man desperately hoping for a letter. When Sara
told him Jerome had lived he flooded with joy, relief and Envy and went back inside, hurt again. They went to tell Ardelle.

  Zoe’s eyes gaped at the ageing woman her mother said was her friend. Sara failed to find words of comfort as she saw how deep news of Jerome’s survival ravaged at the remnants of the woman’s Hope.

  When Galtier brought him nothing, no letter, no card, nothing for three new days in a row Jacques walked down to his beech copse at highest noon with the big axe and swung and cut and swung and ripped the buried blade out and swung and cut and felled and chopped and split till it was evening and he was exhausted. And had enough fire wood for this winter and the next. He left it there. Not enough. Not enough. No letter, yet. Work. Wait.

  The next day the Court tried the men of the legislature, men who had handed down Vichy sentences, enforced Vichy laws.

  “What could we have done?”

  “Refused. We did.”

  “What we did was lessen Vichy law. We saved lives. Many more would and could have been lost.”

  “You didn’t refuse.”

  “I never wanted Germany to triumph.”

  “You say now! Our refusal is our proof of that.”

  “You are arguing gradations of Purity.”

  “Purity has no gradations.”

  “Now you are judging my heart. There is no legal basis for that. You have no legal means to make that judgement. You cannot look into my soul!”

  “You have no soul. You tried Frenchmen under Vichy law.”

  “You are trying me under yours – and yours don’t exist.”

  “Guilty!” someone bellowed from the packed gallery.

  “This is the guillotine again,” shouted the man, a prosecutor himself up to a month ago, “You’ve learned nothing and you can teach nothing.”

  All over France.

  When Toulouse was liberated one thousand two hundred were arrested to be brought to trial. Old scores settled with a fictitious denunciation and plenty of fear-soaked Miliciens lying through their teeth. Shaven-headed women spat on in the streets. French Public life was placed on trial.

  And De Gaulle, President elect of the Fourth Republic, saw that if this purge carved through the civil service particularly, as it threatened to do, as he had promised it should, then France could not operate. Whole stratas of Society could not function. The great bureaucratic cacophony that is France, the infrastructure, would collapse. Nothing would move.